Elemental ‘full fat’ 4K HEVC processing

Elemental Technologies has announced the successful demonstration of full frame rate 4K Ultra HD high-efficiency video coding (HEVC). At an event in London, the company showed an end-to-end workflow in which live 4K@p60 HEVC content was encoded for display in real-time. At sixty frames per second, the demonstration proves the industry leadership Elemental has attained with its HEVC implementation and heralds a new age of highly immersive viewing for consumers.

Elemental first announced support for the H.265 codec in January of 2013. Subsequently, the company brought functional real-time HEVC video processing to NAB in April of this year and demonstrated 10-bit 4K HEVC video processing at IBC in September. While at IBC, Elemental garnered two industry awards for its implementation and advancement of the new HEVC standard. Elemental rapidly progressed its HEVC functionality to achieve the world’s first real-time video processing of live 4K@p30 HEVC at the Osaka Marathon in October and now brings full frame rate 4K HEVC encoding to life in London.
In the demonstration today, an Elemental Live video processing system received high bitrate 4Kp60 AVC video in an MPEG-2 transport stream featuring professional sports content. The system was used to encode and deliver a 4Kp60 HEVC output to a PC-based decoder with final rendering on an 84-inch Planar 4K television.

With four times the resolution of full-resolution high-definition (1080p HD), 4K content presents a challenge to traditional compression approaches such as MPEG-2 and advanced video coding (AVC / H.264) in terms of the bandwidth required to deliver a smooth and immersive viewing experience. Elemental’s HEVC implementation allows for delivery of 4K content at bitrates equivalent to HD content.